


Nobody's Home

by flawedamythyst



Series: The Elephant In The Room [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-19
Updated: 2012-10-19
Packaged: 2017-11-16 14:57:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/540697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawedamythyst/pseuds/flawedamythyst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While John is in hospital after having been rescued from Moriarty, Sherlock and Harry try to decide what to do with him. Meanwhile, John plans a wedding.</p>
<p>Although the other stories in this 'verse are John/Sherlock, this story is set before that, and so I've labelled it as gen.</p>
<p>Betaed by Earlgreytea68, who is lovely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nobody's Home

There was a point, about two and a half weeks after John had gone missing, when Sherlock had exhausted all the possible leads and was forced to resort to just pacing the streets of London as if John would just pop out if he found the right street corner. He alternated between that and going over the pitiful amount of evidence they had at the incident room at the Yard for the hundredth time, until it felt like his mind was going to combust and burn itself out entirely. He had the precise probability that John was already dead constantly running through his head in neon lights, he hadn't slept for longer than an hour since he'd realised John was gone, and there had been nothing, nothing at all that he could think of that might help in any way.

At the time, he had thought it was the worst he would ever be able to feel. It seemed inconceivable that he had the emotional capacity to get any lower than that, but he proved himself wrong on the fifth day after he'd finally managed to track John down.

He arrived at the hospital the instant that visiting hours started. Rather than go straight to John like he wanted to, he forced himself to find John's doctor, Doctor Lopez, first. They had run several tests on John yesterday, and by now he would have had time to evaluate the results and form some conclusions.

When Doctor Lopez saw Sherlock, he let out a tiny sigh that told Sherlock too much. The doctor clearly had nothing that would count as good news and was beginning to lose hope that they'd ever work out precisely what Moriarty's doctors had done to John, and he didn't want to have to explain that to Sherlock. Well, he would have to. Sherlock wasn't just another normal next-of-kin, someone who could be put off with vague statements that didn't actually tell anyone anything. He wanted to know precisely what was going on with John and what the doctors were doing to fix it. Knowing anything less was unimaginable.

In point of fact, he wasn't a next-of-kin at all, which infuriated him whenever he was forced to remember it. He was the one who had finally found John, rescued him, brought him here, stayed with him to keep him calm during those first few hours when they had all thought it was just some new drug that would eventually wear off, and yet until Harry had been summoned and given her permission, no one would _tell_ him anything.

“Mr. Holmes,” said Doctor Lopez. “How are you this morning?”

“Not in the mood for pleasantries,” said Sherlock. “What did the tests reveal?”

“Nothing concrete,” said Doctor Lopez, looking down at the file he was holding, which Sherlock suddenly realised must belong to John. His fingers itched to snatch it from Doctor Lopez's hands so that he could read every detail but he knew he wouldn't really understand any of it. He needed Doctor Lopez to interpret it for him and that made the base of his skull feel as if it was in a vice.

Data that had been examined by someone else, filtered through someone else's brain before it reached his, always felt worse than useless – god only knew what biases they had, what mistakes they might have made. Sherlock had always preferred to do his own analysis and it galled him that on this occasion, when it was so important that they get everything completely right and miss nothing that might help, he had to rely on other people. Even highly trained and reasonably intelligent people like Doctor Lopez couldn't be entirely trusted when what was at stake was John's sanity.

“There is definitely an imbalance,” said Doctor Lopez, “but it's not like anything I've ever seen before, and I have no idea how it could have been caused. Especially not when it's affecting him long-term like this. I've sent the data to a few other specialists, but none of them have been able to help yet. I'm afraid any kind of cure is likely to take a while.” He paused, and Sherlock could guess what was coming next. He glared at Doctor Lopez in an effort to keep his mouth shut on the words, but he insisted on saying them anyway. “If a cure is even possible at all. I'm sorry, Mr. Holmes, but you may have to accept that John will be permanently in this state.”

“No, I won't,” gritted out Sherlock. “I won't have to do any such thing. John will get better – he has to. If you can't help, then I'll find someone who can. Now, show me those results properly, and tell me exactly what they mean.”

Doctor Lopez glanced down at the file again. “They're not really something a layman can understand, I'm afraid. I can give you a rough overview, but-”

Sherlock cut him off. “I'm not your average layman; I'm a genius. Explain it to me.”

To his credit, Doctor Lopez did his best, but after ten minutes, Sherlock was forced to admit that the doctor had been right. He just lacked the necessary background knowledge to make any sense of what Doctor Lopez was saying, although he grasped it well enough once it had been fully explained to him. For all that he revered his brain, he had never bothered to waste time on finding out precisely how it worked, and it turned out to be even more complicated than he had thought.

He wasn't going to be able to even begin to understand what was wrong with John without a great deal of research, and time was ticking by, time which he could be spending with John. In the end, he stopped Doctor Lopez. “Make me a copy of that,” he said, pointing at John's file. “I'll do some reading, then take another look at it.”

Doctor Lopez looked exasperated. “Brain chemistry isn't something you can learn by just popping down to the library,” he said.

“I have access to some of the best medical libraries in London,” said Sherlock. “I have a genius IQ, the ability to completely focus on a project and disregard everything else until it is complete, and an extremely good reason to do this. Don't underestimate me.”

“Okay, okay,” said Doctor Lopez, but Sherlock could see that he didn't really believe him. Well, he wouldn't be the first person Sherlock had proved wrong.

He left Doctor Lopez's office and headed straight to John's room. He'd wasted enough of visiting time already.

He found John crouching in the corner of his room, one arm wrapped protectively around himself while the other pointed an imaginary gun at a nurse who was trying to calm him down.

“I won't tell you anything! Get away from me!” John shouted, and Sherlock felt something inside his chest break apart.

He'd been desperately trying to hold on to the hope that whatever Moriarty had done to John would prove to be temporary, but five days and what he'd understood of what Doctor Lopez had been saying was too much for that hope to survive. For the first time, Sherlock properly understood that John was going to be like this for at least the foreseeable future.

For a moment he reeled at the emotion, lost in the black weight of it pressing in on his mind. It was possibly the worst thing he had ever felt, worse than when Mummy had died, worse than when he'd realised Moriarty had John and had had him for weeks at that point, worse even than the frustration and panic of not being able to find him at all. Because he had found him, but the most important part of him was still missing and might never return. And there was nothing Sherlock could do to change that. It was grief and frustration and a bottomless sadness all at once, mingled with the knowledge that John – when he had been in his right mind – would have hated to be like this. The surge of it all almost overwhelmed him.

With an enormous burst of willpower, he forced himself to push the mess of emotion aside and stepped into the room properly. There was no time to waste on self-pity right now, not when John needed him.

“Sherlock!” said John when he saw him. Sherlock allowed himself a moment of relief that John had recognised him. He had every time so far, but that didn't mean that one day he wouldn't look at Sherlock and be terrified by what he saw. Sherlock wasn't sure how he'd cope if that happened. 

“Thank God!” exclaimed John. “Bullets aren't doing anything to it. You have to do something!”

“John, please calm down,” said the nurse. “I'm not here to hurt you.”

“Christ,” said John in tones of deep distress, and he started to take the quick, forceful breaths that Sherlock knew meant he was terrified. “Please, Sherlock, do something.”

Sherlock fixed the nurse with a glare. “Get out,” he commanded. “You're upsetting him.”

“I was just-” started the nurse, but Sherlock cut him off before he wasted time on excuses.

“Out!” he snapped, and the nurse finally left.

John let out a sigh of relief and relaxed back against the wall. “Christ. I thought you were never coming.”

There was a sensation like being punched in the stomach at that sentence. Sherlock had let John down by not being there for him quickly enough, both today and when Moriarty had him. If he'd only been better, cleverer, faster, he might have got to John before this had been done to him, and they could be back at Baker Street right now, drinking tea and arguing over something trivial, like a severed head.

“I'm here now,” he said, stepping forward to take John's arm. “Come on, get up.” He pulled John to his feet, then helped him the few steps to his bed and set him down on it. It had been decided within a matter of hours on the first day John had been in hospital that it would be best if he had a private room, which Sherlock was grateful for now. There was no one else around to witness him sitting down next to John, putting his hand on John's shoulder and letting the emotions have free rein for a moment. Even John was barely present.

“I hate this place,” said John after a moment.

“Me too,” agreed Sherlock, ignoring that they were likely talking about two completely different places.

“When can we go home?” asked John.

Sherlock didn't have an answer for that. Instead, he drew in a long breath and set about getting all his emotions under control again. Wallowing in misery wasn't going to help anything, and it certainly wasn't going to help him work out what to do to fix this.

He picked up John's chart and ran his eye over it, marking the differences from last night. There was a notation that John had had an episode at around midnight and been sedated. Sherlock scowled at it. John was generally calm and reasonably happy when Sherlock was there but when he was alone with strangers, he tended to imagine all sorts of horrors and become uncontrollable. Sherlock had tried to insist that he should stay here all night with John, but no amount of reasoned arguments were enough to make the medical team give in, and the last thing he wanted to do was to antagonise them so much they banned him from coming in at all.

There was a knock on the door and Doctor Lopez came in. “Good morning, Mr. Holmes,” he said. “I hear you've already managed to upset one of my nurses.”

John made a 'huh' sound and stared at the doctor, but he didn't seem scared or upset, so Sherlock judged it safe to leave him to whatever he was seeing for the moment.

“He had already managed to upset John,” said Sherlock. “You'd think it would be obvious to even the most dense of healthcare professionals that if something is distressing a patient, it should be removed from the room.”

“Unfortunately, it's not always possible to avoid distressing patients,” said Doctor Lopez. “He was attempting to draw some blood. We do need to keep a check on John's blood chemistry, you know.”

Sherlock looked at John, who was frowning at the doctor's face as if trying to place it. Sherlock wondered if he was remembering that he'd seen him every day since he'd arrived here, or was just seeing a hallucination that was semi-familiar. 

They'd tried to put a cannula in John's arm on the first day, and again on the second, but he hadn't reacted well. They'd finally restrained him to do it, only to have him immediately take the thing out once he was free again. There had been talk of keeping him restrained all the time, but Sherlock had put his foot down. He could still remember how John had looked when he'd found him in Moriarty's facility, strapped down to the bed and terrified. He wasn't prepared to let that happen again, not for something as unimportant as a cannula.

However, that did mean that they had to use a needle every time they needed to draw blood and John didn't take kindly to that, either. Last time two nurses had held him down while a third took the blood, all with John screaming as if he was being murdered. Sherlock wasn't interested in that happening again.

“Give me a needle and I'll do it,” he said. “He trusts me.”

Doctor Lopez sighed. “That's hardly in line with hospital procedure.”

Sherlock made a disgusted noise. “Oh, as if that matters. You know that John hates having strangers touching him but he'll let me do anything. It would be much the easiest way. And I can assure you that I am more than capable of handling a needle – I used to be an intravenous drug user, you know.”

“That's not as reassuring as you might think,” said Doctor Lopez. “I really can't have you performing medical procedures on my patient, I'm afraid. How about we try having you keep him calm whilst a nurse does it?”

Sherlock frowned. “Not that idiot from before.”

“No, might be best to try someone different,” said Doctor Lopez. “I was thinking I'd send in Laura.”

Laura was blonde and buxom, and John had already demonstrated a clear preference for her by hallucinating a whole range of complimentary things about her. Sherlock reluctantly nodded. “If it distresses him too much, we'll do it my way next time,” he said.

“We'll see,” said Doctor Lopez in a way that meant no, but Sherlock was confident he'd be able to talk him round if it came to it.

“Sorry,” said John, “I don't mean to be rude, but I've been trying to place you. Was it Metallica you were in?”

Sherlock had no idea what that meant. He gauged John's emotional levels and decided that he wasn't distressed enough for it to be important.

Doctor Lopez gave John a careful smile. “I'm afraid not,” he said.

John's frown deepened. “Iron Maiden? Sorry, I've never been a fan of that kind of music, but my housemate at uni had posters of those bands all round his room. I know you were in one of them, I just can't place which one.”

“I've never been in a rock band,” said Doctor Lopez.

“Oh,” said John, sounding confused.

“I'll find Laura,” Doctor Lopez said to Sherlock, who nodded in response. He didn't look away from John as the doctor left, trying to work out how best to prepare him for this. Well, maybe the easiest solution was the truth.

“John, do you trust me?” he asked.

“Of course,” said John immediately, apparently without even having to think about it. That caused an emotional reaction in Sherlock that went some way to ameliorate his current internal state. John's loyalty was apparently a part of his bedrock that Moriarty couldn't touch.

“Then I need you to concentrate,” he said. “We're in a hospital.”

John laughed and glanced around. “Sherlock, I think I've been in enough hospitals to know one when I see it. This is most definitely not one.”

“You said you trusted me,” Sherlock reminded him.

“Yeah, but I also trust my eyes,” said John.

Sherlock couldn't hold in his wince at that. “You shouldn't,” he said. “Or, at least, you shouldn't trust your brain. What you're seeing isn't real.”

John let out a long sigh. “Sherlock, just because I trust you doesn't mean you can play games with me. I'm not that gullible, you know.” He reached out and rapped the table next to his bed. “See? Solid. And no hospital I've ever been in has amps. Or any kind of sound equipment, really.”

“There's no sound equipment,” said Sherlock through gritted teeth. This was going just as well as every other time over the last few days that he'd tried to persuade John that he was hallucinating. Time to change tack. “Fine, we'll ignore that for now. Wherever you think we are, they need to do some tests on you.”

“Tests?” asked John. “What kind of tests?”

“Blood tests,” said Sherlock. “Completely routine. In a minute, a nurse is going to come in and take some blood from you. All I need you to do is let her. Whatever she looks like, or whatever you think she's doing, you need to just remain calm and let her do it. Trust me when I say no harm will come to you.”

“What?” said John. “Sherlock, do you have any idea how stupid that sounds?”

“And yet, it's true.” Sherlock took hold of John's wrist and held it tightly, wishing there was some way for him to convey just how serious he was being. “If you trust me as much as you say you do, you'll go along with it.”

John was silent for a long moment, looking carefully at Sherlock's face. “Okay,” he said eventually. “Okay, fine. But if I find out later that this is some sort of experiment, Sherlock-”

“It's not, and you won't,” said Sherlock quickly. “Thank you, John.”

There was a knock and the door opened. 

“Hello, John,” said Laura with a bright smile that Sherlock hated seeing, because it was the smile you gave small children or the very old, the kind of smile that said 'I'm pandering to you because you're not all there'. She stayed back by the door rather than approaching John immediately, which Sherlock appreciated. It was best to try and work out what John was seeing before you rushed into interacting with him.

John stared at her for a long moment then glanced back at Sherlock. “Oh, come on,” he said. “She's not a nurse. She's not even human!”

“She is. She's both. Trust me,” said Sherlock firmly, and John sighed, then looked back at Laura. 

“Okay, go for it,” he said. “But nothing too kinky, okay? Not that you're not attractive, but I'm not sure I'm up for any of that Anne Rice stuff.”

Sherlock's general disregard for pop culture and other such trivia had never been such a problem as it had been over the last few days. Keeping up with what John was hallucinating was almost impossible when most of his visions were of things Sherlock had never heard of. He just hoped that 'Anne Rice' wasn't some clue that John was about to react badly.

Laura gave John another careful smile, this one tinged with amusement. Clearly, she knew at least partly what John meant. She didn't seem distressed by it, so Sherlock let her come forward to the bed.

“This is going to be very quick and easy,” she said. “You'll barely feel it at all.”

“He is a doctor, you know,” said Sherlock sharply. “He knows that.”

“Yeah, this is a bit different from anything I've ever studied,” said John. “Do you want my neck, or can we just use my wrist?”

“Your arm will be fine,” said Laura.

“Right,” said John and he gingerly held out his arm to her. She took it and he flinched, then glanced at Sherlock. “You're absolutely sure about this?” he asked.

“Completely,” said Sherlock. He took hold of John's other wrist again, hoping that it was in some way reassuring. “Nothing bad is going to happen to you. Everything is fine.”

John snorted. “I think we have a different idea of 'bad',” he said, but he kept still as Laura injected him. Too still – he was clearly holding himself frozen in place to stop himself from pulling away. “Christ,” he said in a shaky voice as Laura filled the first test tube. “This is-”

“It's fine,” interrupted Sherlock. “You're fine. Keep calm.”

“Right,” said John, keeping his breathing regimentally slow and steady. “It's fine. There's nothing wrong with this situation at all.”

“Precisely,” said Sherlock, watching John's blood fill up the test tubes. 

“Just another day in my life, only instead of a head in the fridge or being strapped to a bomb jacket, today is being fed on by a vampire.”

Sherlock's gaze snapped to his face. “What?”

“You'd think I'd be getting used to this kind of thing,” said John. “Well, at least you found a pretty vampire for it.”

“Thank you,” said Laura, finishing off the last tube.

“Don't encourage him!” said Sherlock. “John, I told you. She's just taking your blood for tests. She's not a vampire.”

“Oh, sorry,” said John. “I suppose that's politically incorrect.”

There was a tap on the door before Sherlock could start to put him right. Logically, he knew there wasn't any point in correcting John until they had found the cause of his delusions and found some way to counteract it, but somehow he just couldn't leave it when John came out with these things.

“I can come back if I'm interrupting,” said Mycroft as he opened the door without waiting for a response to his knock.

“It's fine,” said Laura. “I'm all done.”

Sherlock scowled at him. The last person he wanted around John when he was like this was Mycroft. “You're always an interruption,” he said. “Go away.”

Mycroft let out a little sigh. “I have brought you some information that you might find interesting,” he said, holding up a file.

Some dull problem meant to distract Sherlock, no doubt. “Not interested,” he said, turning back to John, who was flexing his arm and looking at the injection site with fascination. “Don't do that,” he said, taking John's wrist to stop him.

“It's so small,” said John. “How can teeth like that produce a wound so small?”

“It's in reference to Moriarty,” said Mycroft.

Sherlock stilled, then turned to glare at him. Damn him. He knew just how much Sherlock wanted to see Moriarty broken apart and bleeding right now, and was more than willing to use that to manipulate him. A very large part of Sherlock wanted to be on Moriarty's trail right now, finding some way to pull apart his entire organisation and destroying everything important to him. He would have been, as well, but John needed him here. Sherlock was the only one he trusted – if Sherlock disappeared off in search of justice, John would be left alone with no one he recognised, and no one who was capable of calming him down when he got trapped in a particularly unsettling hallucination.

Still, that didn't mean that Sherlock was entirely giving up the hunt for Moriarty. He held out his hand for the file, ignoring the self-satisfied smile Mycroft gave him as he handed it over.

“Hello,” said John to Mycroft. “Do you want some fish?” 

Sherlock opened the file rather than bother working out why he thought Mycroft might want fish. Mycroft barely favoured John with a glance before ignoring him. He hadn't bothered to engage with John once the extent of his condition had become clear. It made Sherlock want to punch him, even if he could see the logic behind it - what was the point in interacting with someone who wasn't experiencing the same world you were?

Except, of course, it was John, and there was always a point to interacting with him, even when he was like this.

The file contained photos of a small cellar that was filled with bodies. They had clearly been made to stand in rows, then gunned down. Sherlock examined the photos carefully, but there wasn't anything other than the scale of it to say that it was linked to Moriarty.

“These three,” said Mycroft, gesturing to three bodies that were near the front of the massacre, “are all doctors who have been discredited for reasons of ethics. Two of them are neurologists, and the third is a neuropsychiatrist. This man,” he said, pointing to a fourth body, “is a neuroscientist. The others,” he turned a page so that Sherlock could see snapshots of another four faces, “all have some experience in the healthcare industry, either as nurses, technicians, or lab assistants. Three of them also have documented criminal links. They were killed at some point yesterday morning, and found late last night.”

“They're the ones who worked on John,” realised Sherlock. He flicked back to the photos again. At least some of the people who had broken John's mind were now dead. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. On the one hand, he'd wanted exactly that since he'd first seen what they'd done to John, but on the other, part of him had wanted to actually see them suffer, had even wanted to be responsible for it.

“It seems likely,” said Mycroft. “We know that most of the people who worked at the facility where you found John escaped before the police could subdue the guards. It seems likely that Moriarty had arranged a meeting point for them to convene at in such a circumstance.”

“And then he killed them all,” said Sherlock. He frowned. “Why? Presumably they're the only ones that know what they did to John, how it was done – why would he destroy that information? Surely he could use it again, or sell it on to others?”

Mycroft tutted. “You're thinking like a sane person,” he said reprovingly. “Remember, Moriarty aimed this all at you. He has succeeded in his goal of destroying John's brain, thereby emotionally crippling you. He now has no further need of the team who managed it and if he had left them alive, there was always the risk we might get hold of one of them. Any information they could have given us could only have helped John's doctors.”

Sherlock found his hand clenching the edge of the file so tightly that it crumpled in his grip. “So instead of risking John recovering, he murdered them all.”

“Precisely,” said Mycroft.

Moriarty had gone to such lengths entirely because he wanted to hurt Sherlock. Because he wanted to 'burn the heart' out of him. He must have spent millions on it – not just on the facility, but on recruiting the staff whose corpses Sherlock was staring at. He had created a whole new way to destroy a human brain and used it on John – a man who would have meant less than nothing to Moriarty if Sherlock had never moved in with him – and left him in this broken state. Just to hurt Sherlock.

He looked at John, who was watching with a faint frown. “Everything okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” lied Sherlock.

From the look John gave him, he wasn't taken in for a second. He levelled a stern look at Mycroft. “Sorry, but if you're going to upset him, you'll have to leave.”

Mycroft let out a quiet laugh. “Isn't that usually your line?” he asked Sherlock, who just glared at him.

“Look,” said John, “I realise that the situation in Antarctica is serious, but what do you expect Sherlock to do about it? He's not an environmental scientist.”

“Leave it, John,” said Sherlock, turning back to Mycroft. “I take it you're tracing how Moriarty recruited these people, interrogating their friends and families, tracing their movements over the last few weeks?”

“Of course,” said Mycroft. “If there's a hint of a trail there, we'll find it.” He paused, then added, “It would be easier if you were actually helping rather than wasting time here, of course.”

“Not happening,” said Sherlock. “I told you before, Mycroft. Your people should be more than qualified to find him. I'm needed here.”

“In order to reverse global warming?” asked Mycroft snidely.

Sherlock scowled at him. “Just piss off and actually get something done, Mycroft.”

John stood up, squaring his shoulders. “You heard him. Time to go back to the zoo.”

“Very well,” said Mycroft. “I shall leave you that file for now. Let me know if anything occurs to you, or you get bored of babysitting.”

He left, thankfully, and Sherlock took a moment to glare after him, before turning to John. “Who do you think was just here?”

John gave him a bewildered look. “A penguin, of course. Rather a large one – probably a good thing he didn't want any fish. He could probably stand to lay off for a while.”

Sherlock blinked as he pictured Mycroft as an overweight penguin, then realised that he was smiling. John had always been the only one who could make him smile without intending to – at least that much hadn't changed.

****

Harry took the lift to the ward John was on, then almost didn't get out when the doors opened. She really wasn't sure she could stand to see him again. She stepped out at the last minute, just as the doors were about to close on her, because there was no point in coming this far and then giving up. And maybe it would be better this time or, at the very least, Sherlock wouldn't be there, to glare at her and snidely imply insults at her.

Sherlock was there. As she entered John's room, he looked up from the heavy book he was reading and frowned as if she was interrupting something important.

“Harry,” he said. “I see you've already imbibed some Dutch courage.”

Harry scowled at him. She'd had a couple of glasses of wine when she'd got home from work to steady her nerves before she came to see the ruin that had been her brother. There was no need for him to be a dick about it.

“Hello, John,” she said, focusing on the reason she was there rather than Sherlock. John appeared to be building a den out of his bedding, and Harry was reminded of the structures they'd built with cushions and blankets when they'd been children.

John's head emerged from his den. “Sssh!” he hissed. “You'll scare the wildlife!” He disappeared again.

“He seems to believe that he's on some kind of nature expedition,” said Sherlock, turning a page in his book. “You should count yourself lucky that he hasn't decided you're an elephant.”

Harry felt herself go pink at the thinly veiled reference to her weight. She wasn't fat, not really, not like some people were; she just enjoyed sitting at home with a glass of wine, something to nibble on and a good book a lot more than she did huffing and puffing about in the gym. It didn't usually bother her too much, but somehow Sherlock always knew precisely what to say to get her hackles up.

“Has there been any change?” she asked, trying to keep the conversation on an adult level rather than resorting to insults in return.

Sherlock's face went completely blank. “No,” he said, then looked back down at his book. 

Harry wondered if he was getting bored of the situation. It had been weeks, after all, and John's blog had made it clear that Sherlock didn't have an abundance of either patience or compassion. It was a wonder he was still coming to the hospital every day when he could be off doing whatever it was that he did. Catching criminals and insulting people, and making the kind of enemies who could turn a man like John into a gibbering idiot just for kicks.

There was a tap on the door. “Miss Watson? I thought I'd seen you come in.” It was Doctor Lopez. “I wonder if I might have a word with you?”

Harry took another look at John, who'd grabbed the bedside lamp and was trying to pull it out of the wall.

“Don't do that, John,” said Sherlock tersely.

“I need it to camouflage our hide,” protested John.

“No, you don't,” replied Sherlock.

Sherlock seemed to have the situation in hand and Harry wasn't sure she really wanted to hear about John's wildlife hunt right now. “Yeah, that's fine,” she said to Doctor Lopez. At least he knew who she was, and wouldn't be rude about her weight.

He took her to his office. Harry took a seat, feeling a bit as if she'd been hauled into the headteacher's room and was about to be shouted at. She never really knew what she was meant to say to Doctor Lopez. Part of her thought that she should be asking him for constant updates on John's condition, but she never really understood his answers when she did that, and what little she did get only served to depress her. She much preferred just assuming that they were doing all they could for John, and if something changed, they'd let her know. Besides, Sherlock kept an obsessively close eye on John's chart – if there was anything, however small, that could be done, he'd be all over it before she'd even managed to get her head around what all the medical jargon meant.

Doctor Lopez sat at his desk, then let out a little sigh. “Miss Watson.” The way he said it gave away that this was going to be a tricky conversation. Harry took a breath and tried to compose herself. She was an adult and she was more than capable of making adult decisions if she needed to, whatever Clara might have thought. She didn't need anyone holding her hand.

“John has now been with us for three weeks,” said Doctor Lopez, “and I'm afraid to say that we are still no closer to really understanding his condition, or working out how we should treat it. In fact, at this point we have tried all the diagnostic tests that we can and have no more idea of what is happening to John than we did when he came in.”

“Oh,” said Harry in a low breath. She had been right. This was exactly the kind of conversation she didn't want to be in. For a split second, she wished Sherlock was dealing with this instead of her, and then felt horrible. She was John's sister, his next-of-kin. Sherlock hadn't even known him for two years. This was her responsibility.

“I'm sorry to have to say this, but it's time to start thinking about long-term care. We can't keep him here indefinitely, and he needs to be somewhere that has the facilities to look after him properly, and that has experience with similar conditions.”

“You want me to put him in a home,” said Harry blankly. 

Two months ago, John had come over to her house, put up a set of bookshelves for her and told her precisely what excessive drinking would do to her liver (which wasn't relevant to her – a few glasses a night wasn't excessive. Sometimes she didn't even finish the bottle). He'd been bossy and aggravating, exactly as he had been her whole life, and she'd been relieved when he'd left but known that if she needed him for anything, all she had to do was call. And now she was being told that she needed to tuck him away in a home, that his life was effectively over.

“I am sorry, Miss Watson,” said Doctor Lopez. “We will, of course, continue to try and find ways to help him, but at the moment, there is nothing we can do. And, as you are aware, the episodes that he has at night are increasing. We have had to sedate him several times. In a proper facility they would be able to make him more comfortable.” He opened a drawer and took out a leaflet. “The staff here would take good care of him.”

Harry stared blankly at the leaflet. _Oakleaf Psychiatric Hospital_ it read, but her eyes blurred too much to read the rest. She took a deep breath and gave a quick nod. “Right,” she said.

“Read that over,” said Doctor Lopez. “We'll talk about it more later.”

She nodded again, unable to find any real words, then stood up. All she could think to say as she left was, “Thank you,” which sounded stupid to her ears as soon as she was outside. Thank you for what? Failing to cure John? Telling her to lock him away where he couldn't hurt himself or others and then forget about him? There was no one to be thanked in this situation.

Sherlock was just outside John's room when she got back to it, hovering in the doorway and having a furious argument in a hushed voice with a man in an expensive three-piece suit.

“It's not my fault you've recruited such utter cretins,” he was saying. “If your lot can't even take down one criminal organisation, then I weep for the future of this country, I really do.”

“It is far more difficult than that,” said the man in an exasperated voice. “As you are well aware. If you could just-”

“No!” said Sherlock. “I told you – I'm _busy_. Do it yourself!” He noticed Harry before the man could respond, his eyes glancing over her and then riveting on the leaflet in her hand. “Oh,” he said in a low groan. “No. No! You can't do it!”

Harry tightened her jaw. “In case you hadn't noticed, there isn't a lot of choice,” she said. “There's nothing more they can do for him here.”

“That doesn't mean you can just lock him away and forget about him as if he's nothing!” said Sherlock, stepping towards her as if trying to intimidate her.

Screw that. Harry had spent enough time being intimidated by people over the years, she wasn't going to let it happen this time.

“He's not nothing,” she said fiercely. That was the very last thing John was. “He's my brother. But this is all I can do for him now.”

Sherlock shook his head as if to push that away. “I won't let you.”

Harry took a careful breath. Why did every conversation she had with Sherlock end up as an argument? “You can't stop me,” she reminded him. She was John's next-of-kin. Sherlock didn't have the authority to contest whatever decision she made for John's care. “Now, excuse me so I can see my brother.”

He glared at her as if a look from him could kill and she almost flinched back but held herself steady at the last moment. _I will not be intimidated,_ she thought, the same mantra that had helped her finally leave Clara.

“Sherlock,” murmured the man in a suit, and Sherlock transferred his glare to him instead, then stepped out of the doorway so that Harry could get past.

“If you'll remember, I suggested some form of paperwork to prevent this happening,” she heard the man in a suit say as she went in. “Even a marriage would have-”

“You know that would have been ridiculous,” snapped back Sherlock.

John was just inside the room, standing against the wall so that Sherlock couldn't see him. Harry jumped when she saw him, still preoccupied by boggling over that last exchange. Was the man really saying that he'd told Sherlock to marry John just to become his next-of-kin? What kind of fucked up person would do something like that?

“Ssh!” hissed John when he saw her. “Don't tell them I'm listening.”

“Eavesdropping isn't polite,” Harry reminded him in their mother's words.

John made a face, but went obediently back to the bed. “Trying to get Sherlock to just tell me anything is nearly impossible,” he complained. “I didn't even know he knew Mr. Benn.”

God, the man had looked a bit like Mr. Benn as well. Somehow, John's hallucinations were always more unnerving when they were passed on a shred of truth. “Maybe he'll tell you about it when he comes back,” she suggested.

John rolled his eyes to express what he thought the chances of that were. “Sherlock never tells me anything,” he pointed out. “You were closer – did Mr. Benn really mention Sherlock getting married?”

Nothing wrong with his hearing, then. “I think that was just a joke,” said Harry carefully. The last thing John needed right now was to know that his best friend had been advised to marry him.

John looked thoughtful. “I don't know,” he said. “One of the first things Sherlock told me was that he considered himself married. Maybe Mr. Benn wanted him to make it official.”

Before Harry could answer that, Sherlock came storming in. “I hate that man!” he announced, throwing himself back down in the chair next to John's bed, the one that he had essentially lived in over the last three weeks, as far as Harry could tell.

“I bet you like the shopkeeper more,” said John. “No chance to get bored with him around.”

Sherlock gave John an irritated look that Harry had learnt meant he didn't know what John was talking about.

“It's a children's TV show,” she said helpfully.

Drawing Sherlock's attention to her was not a good idea. He glowered at her. “What are you still doing here? You've already made your decision to abandon him.”

Harry lost her temper. “What do you want me to do, Sherlock? He can't stay here forever, he's not getting better – should I be giving up my life and my job so I can look after him full-time? Keeping a stock of sedatives in the cupboard for when he decides that the Mysterons are attacking? You're the genius, you think of a better solution than putting him somewhere where professionals can look after him!”

Sherlock was, blissfully, struck silent by that, although he did still look as if he wanted to kill her. Harry took a deep breath. God, she needed a drink. Several drinks. She shook her head. “I'm sorry, John,” she said. “I've got to go. I'll come back tomorrow, okay?”

“Ah, okay,” said John. “Maybe we'll see some deer then. You can do the commentary.”

“Maybe,” said Harry, and left without bothering to find out who he thought she was. It was definitely time for a drink. Maybe she should pick up another couple of bottles of wine on her way home – she didn't want to run out.

****

It was a couple of days before she went back. Well, it wasn't as if John would notice that she wasn't there when she said she'd be, and she needed a bit of time to get her head around all this. She read the leaflet Doctor Lopez had given her, then did a bit of research on the internet. Nothing bad came up about the place, and there were some pictures of a garden that she though John might like sitting in. If his brain decided to let him see it properly, of course.

She did a search on other places in and around London, but they all seemed to be pretty similar. Did it really matter exactly where John was when what he was seeing wasn't ever close to reality?

None of the research she did was enough to shake the sick feeling in her stomach. What was she doing making this decision for John? She could barely work out what to get him for Christmas. They spoke less and less every year, and hadn't had anything in common since they were teenagers. She tried to work out what he'd do in her place, but she really had no idea. Would he understand the truth of what the doctors were saying enough to agree with them, or would his stubborn streak kick in and prompt him to do something completely different?

When she finally went back to the hospital, she'd pretty much resigned herself to just agreeing to whatever Doctor Lopez suggested. What else could she do? She wasn't a brain doctor – she'd barely even understood GCSE biology – and there didn't seem to be a great deal of choice in this, anyway.

She went straight to John's room in order to put off the conversation with Doctor Lopez just that little bit longer, and then found herself pausing outside the door. Somehow it was even harder to go inside now that she knew that she was going to be letting them put him away, even if that was the only sensible thing to do.

“What are you doing?” came Sherlock's voice through the door. Harry almost didn't recognise it as his, because it lacked the caustic edge that she'd assumed he was incapable of speaking without. He almost sounded gentle, in fact. She wouldn't have believed such a thing was possible.

“Measuring you for your new suit,” said John's voice in reply. Harry pushed on the door with her fingertips, opening it just enough to see that Sherlock was sat on the bed with a book with John knelt behind him, holding his hands out as if measuring his shoulder width with a tape measure.

“I already have lots of suits,” Sherlock pointed out. John took one of his arms and stretched it out to measure it. Sherlock just let him do it, not resisting in the slightest.

“I know,” said John, “but don't you think you should get a new one for this?” He sat back on his heels and Sherlock let his arm drop. “It's on the list, anyway.” He gestured at the wall in front of them, which was completely blank.

“I am perfectly content with the suits I have,” said Sherlock.

John sighed. “Oh, fine then. I suppose one of them will do – maybe with that purple shirt. That's a good shirt.”

Sherlock turned his head in order to give him a look that Harry didn't recognise, and that looked wrong on his face in the same way that the new tone sounded wrong in his voice. She wondered if this was the side of him that John had seen, the one that meant he was willing to follow him into danger with the fervour of an acolyte. “I wasn't aware you liked it,” he said.

“'Course I do,” said John. “It looks good on you.” He climbed off the bed, entirely missing the pleased, surprised look that came over Sherlock's face. 

Harry saw it though, and she wondered if she should announce her presence, but it was too fascinating to see this side of John and Sherlock's friendship. She wouldn't have imagined Sherlock letting John manhandle him like that, not without losing his patience. For the first time, she was beginning to actually see them as friends, rather than wondering why John spent so much time with someone so rude and bad-tempered.

John stood in front of Sherlock and held out his hand. “I definitely do need a new suit,” he said. “None of mine will do. Can you measure me? I know I've put on weight recently.”

“What do you need a new suit for?” asked Sherlock, not moving.

John let his hand drop and sighed. “I know you've been through my wardrobe, Sherlock. There's nothing in there that's suitable for your Best Man.”

Sherlock looked as surprised as Harry felt. “Best Man?”

“Well, yes,” said John. “Keep up.” He blinked, then started to look awkward. “I mean, I know you haven't asked, but I just assumed. Unless you'd rather have Mycroft – I know some people prefer family-”

“Mycroft?” interrupted Sherlock. “Don't be ridiculous, John.”

“Right, of course not,” said John. “Well, Lestrade then? You have known him longer than me.” He was trying to hide it, but Harry could tell he was upset at the idea of not being Sherlock's Best Man. And if she could see it, then Sherlock definitely could.

“But I don't know him nearly as well,” said Sherlock. “John, this is a ridiculous conversation. You know precisely how likely I am to need a Best Man.” 

“Of course I do!” said John. He gestured at the wall again. “Why do you think I'm trying to get this all sorted? Whoever it is is going to need a suit, you know.” He sounded a bit frantic, in the same way that Clara had when she and Harry had been planning their wedding and Harry had discovered that she didn't really care enough about the fine details to be able to help make decisions about them.

Sherlock gave John a careful, intent look. “If I ever were to get married, John, there is only one person I would want standing next to me, and that's you.”

All the tension in John's body left with a great whoosh of breath. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, good. I'll need a suit then.” He held out his hand to Sherlock again, apparently trying to give him the imaginary tape measure.

“John,” said Sherlock with exasperation. Harry decided she had spent long enough eavesdropping, and that perhaps it would be a good idea to interrupt this scene before they got in an argument over an invisible tape measure.

She tapped on the door. “Hiya, just me,” she said.

Sherlock glanced at her with his usual faint irritation. John turned his head and the moment he saw her, his eyes went wide. “Oh god,” he croaked.

“John,” said Sherlock immediately. “It's just Harry. There's no need-”

“It's not bloody Harry!” shouted John, backing rapidly into the corner. “Jesus fucking Christ, Sherlock, what have you done?”

Harry's stomach plummeted. John was staring at her with disbelieving horror and it felt like a knife right in her chest. “John,” she said. “John, it's just me. There's no need for this.”

“Oh god,” he said, sounding choked up. “It sounds just like her. Sherlock, seriously, this is too far. You can't _do_ this kind of thing, it's beyond wrong!”

“John,” said Sherlock, standing up and spreading his hands as he took a step or two towards John. “Come on, John. Concentrate. It's Harry, you just need to look at her properly.”

“Jesus Christ, Sherlock,” said John, beginning to sound as if he were going to hyperventilate. He still hadn't taken his eyes off Harry and all the blood had drained from his face. For a moment, Harry thought he was going to faint. “I think I know the difference between my sister and my mum,” he said, and Harry felt herself flinch. “Especially when one of them has been dead for eight years!”

Oh god. John thought she was Mum. She felt herself go as pale as John was and her stomach started to churn.

“John, it's not-” started Sherlock again.

“No!” snapped John. “Shut up! You don't get to bring my dead mother back as a zombie and then act as if I'm overreacting if I'm upset about it! Get her out of here! Sherlock, get her out, and undo whatever you did.”

Sherlock glanced over his shoulder at Harry, frowning at her as if she was the problem instead of John, as if she was the one causing a scene.

“Please, John,” she said, feeling helpless and nauseous in equal measure. “Don't do this.”

“Oh God,” said John in a wavering voice. “Oh God, oh Christ.” He looked as if he was right on the verge of losing it entirely.

Harry could feel tears rising up in her eyes. Clearly her presence wasn't helping in any way, so she stumbled back out of the door, leaving Sherlock to it. She got outside and put her back to the wall as she tried to calm herself down. God, she couldn't stand this. She couldn't cope with seeing John like this, and she definitely couldn't stand to see him stare at her like that, thinking she was the zombie of their dead mother. Oh god, Mum. For a split second Harry was overwhelmingly relieved that she didn't have to see John like this because it would have broken her heart, and then she felt horrible. Mum had died far too young, and so suddenly. What was Harry doing not wanting her still here?

She choked on a sob and just like that, the tears started to roll. She buried her face in her hands, slumped back against the wall and let it all come out. The John she knew was gone, wiped away as if he had never existed. There was nothing left of him, nothing she could cling to. The last of her family was as good as dead.

“Are you okay?” asked a voice, and she looked up to see Doctor Lopez.

She shook her head just as John's raised voice came clearly through the door. “This kind of insane science is just wrong, Sherlock! Oh, no, don't touch me, not if you don't want to be thumped.”

“Ah,” said Doctor Lopez, then sighed. In the background, Harry could hear Sherlock's voice speaking in calming tones, although the words were too indistinct to make out.

“He thought I was our mum,” she said around her sobs. “He thinks Sherlock brought her back as a zombie.”

“I see,” said Doctor Lopez. He glanced at the door. “I should see how he is.”

Harry nodded, and Doctor Lopez pushed open the door and went inside. There was sudden silence for a heartbeat as they all waited for John to react.

“Oh, good god,” he said after a moment, in a strangled voice. “There's another one.”

“John, you need to calm down,” said Doctor Lopez. Harry crept closer to the door to listen, making sure to keep out of John's sight. She couldn't handle that again.

“I don't take orders from zombies,” said John. His voice had risen higher, so that he sounded only a step away from hysteria.

“Take an order from me, then,” said Sherlock. “Take a deep breath, John. There are no zombies; you are merely hallucinating them.”

“I'm not taking orders from a mad scientist either,” said John. “No! No, keep away from me!” There was a scuffling noise, then a crash. “Don't touch me!”

“John, please-” started Doctor Lopez.

“Get away from me!” shouted John, then there was the sound of something hitting flesh, followed by an 'ooph' noise from Doctor Lopez.

“John!” said Sherlock sharply. “There's no need for that!”

“Clearly you haven't seen enough zombie films,” said John. There was another crash. “Aim for its head!”

Doctor Lopez exited the room in a hurry, looking dishevelled.

“Are you okay?” asked Harry.

Before he could reply, there was another loud shout from John. “You can get out as well, Sherlock! I've had it up to here with your bloody experiments! Go and get rid of them! All of them!”

“John, please,” said Sherlock, and he sounded more upset than Harry could have imagined him getting. She remembered how calm and relaxed he and John had been before she'd walked in. She'd ruined that, just with her presence.

“Out!” demanded John, and there was the sound of something else being thrown.

Sherlock came out a moment later, shutting the door behind himself and frowning at both Doctor Lopez and Harry as if they shouldn't be there to witness his retreat. His mask of irritation wasn't complete though, and underneath it, for the first time, Harry could see the same distress that she was feeling, the same shaken horror that someone like John could be stuck like this.

“I'll get some of the porters to help us restrain him,” said Doctor Lopez.

“No,” said Sherlock. “You know he hates that.”

Doctor Lopez sighed. “He's throwing things at people, Sherlock. We need to get him restrained and sedated before he hurts someone. Or himself.” He looked at Harry. “It's likely that we need to speed up the move to a proper facility.”

From inside the room came a crash as if a large piece of furniture, possibly the bed, had been tipped over. Harry found herself nodding. If John was going to have episodes like this, he needed to be somewhere that could cope with them.

“So they can keep him restrained and sedated all the time?” asked Sherlock. “That's not going to help! He's fine most of the time – calm and reasonably content, as long as you don't surprise him.”

“When he's with you,” pointed out Doctor Lopez. “But you can't be with him all the time.” He looked at Harry again. “I'm sorry, Miss Watson, surely you can see there's no choice here?”

“There's always a choice,” said Sherlock. “You don't need to restrain him, or sedate him. I'll show you.”

He stepped back into the room before either Harry or Doctor Lopez could respond. 

Doctor Lopez let out an irritated sigh. “We're going to end up having to replace everything not nailed down in there,” he said.

“John,” came Sherlock's voice, and he sounded far more calm and patient than Harry felt right now. “What are you doing?”

“Building a hide-out,” said John. There was another bang, and a scraping noise. “If there's going to be a zombie apocalypse, I'll need a defensive position.”

“There's not going to be,” said Sherlock. “They're all gone now.”

There was a pause. “All of them?” asked John. “You didn't keep any of them back for experiments?”

“No,” said Sherlock. “There's not a single zombie in this building. I promise.”

“And you incinerated the bodies?” said John.

“Of course,” said Sherlock.

There was another pause, then John let out a long sigh. “God, I hope you're not lying to me. I really don't want my brain eaten.”

“No one is going to eat your brain,” said Sherlock. “Apart from anything else, I doubt if it's in a condition that anyone would find appetising.”

“Oi!” said John. “My brain is perfectly tasty, thank you very much. We can't all be geniuses, you know. Oh, that's an idea – if the zombies do attack, I'll just throw you to them. You should have enough brains to keep them occupied for long enough so that I can escape.” 

He sounded faintly amused, which was a complete contrast to the panic he'd been in only a few minutes ago. Harry was impressed at how quickly Sherlock had got him calmed down. She couldn't imagine being able to keep it together enough in the face of John's hallucinations to manage that.

“I'm not sure that's the best plan you've ever had,” said Sherlock. “Neither was rearranging this room. How about we put it back as it was?”

“Right,” said John, and there was a series of thumps, and some more dragging noises.

Harry looked at Doctor Lopez, who shook his head. “None of our staff have ever been able to talk him down once he's all wound up like that,” he said. “We have tried several times, but he just works himself into more of a state. Unfortunately, Sherlock is the only one he trusts enough for just talking to him to work.”

Harry glanced at the door, remembering the panic in John's eyes when he'd looked at her. As far as she knew, he'd never looked at Sherlock like that, not once. He was still the only one that John recognised, that he didn't ever see as something horrible. Maybe she should take that as a sign – John had clearly decided who he could trust, and who he couldn't.

When Sherlock came out, carrying the remains of what had once been a lamp, she stopped him.

“I hope you're not intending to go back in there,” he said. “I've only just got him relaxed again.”

She shook her head. “I'm not sure I could,” she confessed. “In fact, I'm not sure I'll be coming to see him again – there doesn't seem much point when he doesn't know who I am, and especially not if there's a chance it'll upset him like that again.”

“I see,” said Sherlock. “You're just going to abandon him, then. Put him in a home and forget about him.”

Harry shook her head. “No, I'm going to put him in the only hands he trusts,” she said. “Sherlock, from now on I'm authorising you to make all the decisions about his care.”

Sherlock stared at her without speaking for a moment, his face completely blank. Eventually he gave a tight nod. “That seems a sensible decision.”

Harry sighed and wondered if she had really expected an actual response, or even a thank you. “Just don't let me regret it,” she said. “He's the only family I have left.”

“I don't intend to let him down,” said Sherlock, sounding annoyed that she could even think he might. He hesitated, then added, “He's the only friend I've ever had.” His eyes ducked away from hers as he spoke, and that was enough to tell Harry that this was a Holmes version of a thank you, and an attempt at a reassurance. 

It was enough for her. She left the hospital feeling lighter than she had when she arrived, despite the incident with John. It finally felt like she'd made the right decision.

****

The greenhouse was quiet and peaceful. John could tell why Sherlock had chosen to come here to read, even if he did have his usual appalling timing when it came to holing up with his latest research obsession rather than actually getting on with what needed to be done.

Sherlock was surrounded by papers and books, spread out on the edge of the fountain next to him as he frowned down at The Monster Book of Monsters, one finger absently stroking the spine to keep it calm. John almost felt bad about interrupting him but they were running out of time and decisions still had to be made. 

“The foxgloves are looking good,” he said, bending to take a closer look at them. “Are you sure you don't want them instead of the monkshood?”

Sherlock glanced up at him with a frown for a fraction of a second, then went back to his book. “Whatever you think is best, John,” he said.

John let out a short sigh. Honestly, you'd think Sherlock would make some effort – this was his wedding, after all, not John's. “We'll stay with the monkshood,” he decided. “It's a bit late to change now.”

He headed over to the monkshood and pulled on a pair of gloves to start selecting the best blooms for Sherlock's bouquet.

There was a tap on the glass of the door, then the priest came in from the garden.

“Good afternoon, Sherlock,” he said.

“Go away,” said Sherlock. “I'm busy.”

The priest let out a sigh and picked up one of Sherlock's pieces of paper. “Oh, honestly. Don't you think it's time to admit defeat on this one?”

Sherlock glared at him. “No,” he gritted out.

“Sherlock,” said John. “You do need to talk to him about the vows. There are some decisions I just refuse to make for you.”

“Making a decision is precisely what I am trying to do,” said Sherlock testily. “And it is far more important than choosing flowers.”

“Important, yes,” said the priest. “But hardly difficult, surely? There is nothing more you can do here, Sherlock. The die is cast.”

“I'm not writing him off just because everyone else already has,” said Sherlock.

John gave up on following the conversation and went back to the flowers. They didn't have long, after all, and he needed to make this bouquet before they headed to the chapel.

“What do you intend to do instead? Hope that one of those textbooks will contain information that the best doctors in the country don't have? Keep waiting pointlessly, as if one day he will just wake up cured? It's done, Sherlock. You need to take the obvious path-”

“No, I don't,” snapped Sherlock. “For god's sake, it hasn't even been a month yet! If we gave up on curing things this easily, we'd all still be dying of smallpox.”

“Smallpox was eradicated through vaccination, not treatment,” said the priest. “Sherlock, think about this. John will not be cured just because you want him to be, and are willing to sacrifice your time to it.”

“Cured?” asked John, lifting his head from arranging a sprig of leaves next to the wolfsbane. “I'm fine – I've been wearing gloves.” He held his hands up to show them off. “I'm not an idiot.”

“Don't talk about him as if he's not here,” snapped Sherlock, completely ignoring John.

“He isn't here,” said the priest. “The sooner you accept that, the easier it will be for you.”

“Easy?” sneered Sherlock. “I'm not interested in _easy_. I'm interested in getting my friend back. If you're not going to help, you can get out.”

John carefully wrapped the flowers with a doily so that Sherlock would have something to hold that wouldn't poison him, then contemplated it for a moment. It really needed a ribbon, but what colour?

“And if you can't get him back?” asked the priest. “Medicine is not your forte, Sherlock, and for good reason. You lack the compassion and the sentiment needed for it. This situation is horrific, and tragic, but it is a fait accompli. What he needs now is to be where people can care for him properly.”

Sherlock took a very long breath, gritting his teeth together and staring through the glass ceiling at the clouds passing by. They were purple today, for some reason – John assumed Mycroft had arranged it in celebration of Sherlock's wedding day. He was the only person John could think of who had enough power at the Met Office to manage something like that.

“Go away,” said Sherlock eventually. “Just...go away. I'm bored of arguing with you. It's my decision what I spend my time doing.”

“And how long before you get bored of this as well, and long to get back to your murders?” asked the priest. “What position will that leave him in?”

“It's not going to happen,” gritted out Sherlock.

The priest raised his eyebrows. “We'll see,” he said in a way that made John's hackles rise. He might not understand what they were talking about, but this was Sherlock's wedding day. No one should be speaking to him like that today.

“Sherlock, what colour shirt are you wearing?” he asked, interrupting the glare Sherlock was levelling at the priest.

Sherlock turned to look at him, then glanced down at himself. “Blue,” he said.

John sighed. “Not now. Later. At the service.”

“Also blue,” said Sherlock. “I'm not getting changed today, John.”

John looked at what Sherlock was wearing. It looked just like what he usually wore, as if this was any other day. He slammed the bouquet down on the edge of the flowerbed. 

“You're not taking this seriously!” he said. “A lot of work has gone into making this day special for you – and not just by me. Mrs. Hudson's made a stupid amount of cake, and I know Lestrade's written a speech, and even Mycroft's had a hand in it.” He gestured up at the clouds. Sherlock looked up, then shook his head. “At least put on something a bit nice, Sherlock.”

“This suit is fine,” said Sherlock.

“It's a little tight,” observed the priest. “Are you sure those buttons aren't going to pop off?”

Sherlock glared at him. “You'd be the expert on that, wouldn't you? Why are you still here, anyway?”

“I have no idea,” said the priest with a sigh. “It's clear you intend to be as deaf to my advice on this as you are with everything else.”

“Because your advice is always wrong,” said Sherlock.

“All that remains for me, then,” continued the priest without acknowledging Sherlock's statement, “is to offer my help. Whatever you decide to do, Sherlock, please don't hesitate to ask for assistance. I have already had one of my people research several local facilities that would be suitable for John, and-”

“Not interested!” said Sherlock loudly.

The priest continued regardless. John was impressed with his tenacity in the face of Sherlock's interruptions, and wondered if he'd had experience with them before. “-if you decide a private one would be best, I will be more than happy to cover the costs for you. If you also decide to stick to this foolhardy course of attempting to prove the best brain specialists in the country wrong, I will provide you with enough money to cover your rent and bills. I'd just ask you to consider your actions carefully before you dedicate yourself to this, Sherlock. It's not something to do on a whim.”

He left before Sherlock could reply with more than a glare, going back out into the garden. John hoped he was merely taking the scenic route to the chapel and not running off altogether. It had been hard enough finding a priest willing to officiate over such an unusual wedding without Sherlock frightening him off before they'd even started.

Sherlock let out a very long, quiet sigh and rubbed a hand over his face. He looked down at the book in front of him, then shoved it angrily away. “God damn him,” he muttered. 

Something about his face looked almost defeated and John couldn't allow that. Sherlock shouldn't ever be defeated. He walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Don't listen to him,” he said. “What does he know?”

“Too much, sometimes,” said Sherlock. He reached up for John's hand and took it off his shoulder, holding it cradled between his hands instead. “John, may I ask you something?”

“Of course,” said John. Hopefully this wasn't going to be wedding day jitters – for all he approved of Sherlock getting the official acknowledgement of what he already held to be true in his heart, John wasn't sure he was prepared to have to talk him into it.

“Imagine you had a friend,” said Sherlock. “An extremely close friend.” Not wedding jitters then. Probably a case. Well, it was probably fitting for Sherlock to be thinking about a case today.

“Like you?” asked John.

Sherlock hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, precisely. And, hypothetically, that friend was involved in an accident that damaged his brain so that he required constant supervision.”

John tightened his hand around Sherlock's. Even just imagining anything like that happening to Sherlock made him feel sick.

“All the doctors claim that there is nothing to be done,” continued Sherlock, “but you are certain that if you just look hard enough, you'll be able to find something. There certainly doesn't seem to be any point in writing him off until you're absolutely sure that they're right. What would you do?”

Well, that wasn't quite what John had been expecting. “I don't know,” he said honestly. “As a doctor, I'd like to think that his doctors had done everything they could, and that I could trust them to know when there was nothing more to be done, but...” He paused, pictured Sherlock in a hospital somewhere with doctors shaking their heads over him. He wouldn't be able to just let that rest. “No, I'd have to keep trying. I couldn't let that happen to you unless I'd made sure there was no alternative.”

Sherlock relaxed back, nodding to himself. “Exactly,” he said. “Yes. And what would you do with him in the meantime? Would you find a home for him, or would you look after him yourself?”

Oh, that was a hard one. John sat down on the edge of the fountain next to Sherlock, watching as a flock of hummingbirds went past. “I suppose that depends on how much looking after he needed,” he said. “There are some extremely good homes around, you know. Not all of them deserve the bad name they tend to get.”

“However good they are, it's not the same as actually being home,” said Sherlock. “Besides which, they all enforce visitor hours.”

“Yeah,” agreed John. “And if this hypothetical friend is you, then you'd hate being in one. I couldn't leave you like that, surrounded by strangers.” He thought about it more, trying to get his head around the decision. For all he wanted to be able to just say 'I'd look after you myself', he knew just how much care might be needed. “It would be giving up my entire life, though,” he said. “I suppose I'd have to sit down and work out exactly how much care you'd need, if I'd be able to afford it, who else might help, if I needed it. That kind of thing. It's not an easy decision, even hypothetically.”

“No,” agreed Sherlock. He let out an almost pained laugh. “No, it's really not.”

“Is this for a case?” asked John.

Sherlock's face shuttered over. “Something like that,” he said, then turned back to his papers, picking one out of the pile and studying it intently. Apparently the conversation was over.

“Right,” said John, looking back over at the half-finished bouquet, then glancing at his watch. “Well, we've got five minutes before we have to go to the chapel.”

“We're not going anywhere,” said Sherlock, pulling a scroll out from his pile and starting to write furiously on it.

“Oh no,” said John. “You don't get to do that. I know you want this, and we're not going to let last-minute nerves win. I'll drag you there and force you through the ceremony if I have to.” There was a bush next to the fountain that grew ribbons instead of flowers. John carefully sorted through them until he'd found a blue one the same shade as Sherlock's shirt, then took it over to the bouquet.

“John, I'm busy right now,” said Sherlock.

“No one is too busy for their own wedding,” said John.

“I can't believe you'd ever think me interested in such a thing,” muttered Sherlock, sounding disgusted. “Honestly, John. Marriage is hardly my forte.”

“It was one of the first things you told me about yourself,” John reminded him. “'I consider myself married to my work.' We've gone to all this effort to make it official – you're not backing out now.”

Sherlock stopped what he was doing and looked up at John with surprise. “You've been planning a marriage ceremony between me and my work?” he asked.

John rolled his eyes. “Haven't you been paying attention? Who else would you marry?”

Sherlock let out a brief laugh. “Who else indeed?” he asked. “John, I'm afraid this isn't a good time for this. My work and I are, ah, on a separation.”

John put down the bouquet and stared at him. “A separation?” he repeated incredulously. Sherlock and his work had been a concrete certainty for years, even before John had met them. What can possibly have gone wrong?

“Yes,” said Sherlock. “I have something more important to occupy myself with.”

John looked at the papers and books surrounding him. “What could possibly be more important?”

“You'd be surprised,” said Sherlock. He added in a mutter, “Everyone else has been.”

“Right,” said John, when it became clear that that was all he was getting. “Well, I'm not telling your guests, or the priest. You can do that.”

“Fine,” said Sherlock. He picked up his quill again and went back to whatever it was he was writing.

John looked again at the bouquet and sighed. What was he going to do with it now? It seemed a shame to just throw it away, even if it was already withering. He picked it up and put it in the fountain, where it would at least be hydrated until he could find something else to do with it.

There was a tiny, happy sigh from the flowers, then they suddenly expanded, shooting upwards.

“Christ!” exclaimed John, starting backwards. The flowers grew to about six feet tall, the doily and ribbon growing with them, transforming into a robe tied with a belt as they went. There was another, louder sigh as the flowers shook themselves into a shape resembling a man, lifting their face to the sky.

“Thank you,” the flower-creature said in a hushed, breathy voice, then it stepped out of the fountain and strolled away.

“Everything okay?” asked Sherlock, not looking up from his papers. Apparently plants turning into people was not even worth glancing at.

Well, if he wasn't going to make a big deal of it, neither was John. “Fine,” he said. “Just a bit of a surprise.”

Sherlock just hummed in response, finishing whatever he had been writing and picking it up to read it over. John could see now that it was a list of some kind.

“I can't believe you've found a replacement for your work,” he said. A thought struck him, and he frowned. “You didn't cheat on it, did you?”

“Not really,” said Sherlock. “It was more in the manner of a threesome for a while, but circumstances have changed, and now that arrangement is impossible.” He snorted. “Really, John, I'm not sure this metaphor can handle being stretched so far.”

“It came down to a choice, and you chose something other than your work?” asked John. He shook his head to himself. “Well, whatever it is must be pretty special.”

Sherlock looked up from his list, giving John a long, unreadable look. “Yes,” he said eventually. “Yes, it is.” He looked back down at his list, then put it down, running one finger along the edge of it to line it up with the book below it. “I have a suggestion for what we do this afternoon,” he said. “How about we go home?”

John felt his mouth stretch into a broad smile. Just the idea of it was enough to make him feel more relaxed than he had been in days – as nice as the Holmes manor was, nothing beat 221B for homeliness. “God yes,” he said. “That would be great.”

Sherlock returned his smile. “I'll let Doctor Lopez know,” he said.

“And I'll find some way to pack up Mrs. Hudson's cakes,” said John. “There's no way I'm leaving them all here for Mycroft to eat.”

“That's the spirit,” said Sherlock, starting to gather up his papers. 

_Home,_ thought John. Yes, he'd really like that. That was where he and Sherlock belonged, really.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover Art: Nobody's Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5171750) by [Trishkafibble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trishkafibble/pseuds/Trishkafibble)
  * [(PODFIC) Nobody's Home by FlawedAmythyst](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10450446) by [AvidReaderLady](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvidReaderLady/pseuds/AvidReaderLady)




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